Hi! My name is Letitia Walker.

I’m a Certified Purna Yoga Instructor and have been teaching Great Yoga Wall classes, immersions, & trainings since 2014.

PURNA YOGA AMBASSADOR
E-RYT-200, E-RYT-500, 2,000 HR CPYI
PRACTICING SINCE 1998
TEACHING SINCE 2004
DIRECTOR OF PURNA YOGA 828 SINCE 2017

Encountering the Great Yoga Wall was transformational for me. The very first yoga studio I attended in 1998 had a Great Yoga Wall installed. There were only a few panels, and class size was usually too large for us to do much on the Wall, but I would watch more experienced students use it to enhance spinal traction in poses like Downward-Facing Dog or to increase shoulder mobility as a warm-up before class. Its existence planted a seed within me. At the very least, the presence of that Wall showed me that traction, accessibility, and prop support play an important role in any yoga or embodiment practice.

I chose to focus on Wall work in 2013, after completing my 500 Hour training through Purna Yoga College with Aadil Palkhivala, which included a wide variety of ways to incorporate the Wall into classes, as well as two additional trainings, which featured advanced applications of the Wall for working with private clients in a therapeutic capacity.

I studied with Bryan Legere, one of the co-founders of The Great Yoga Wall company and the primary teacher trainer on the Wall at the time. I was lucky to have an immediate rapport with him. Our time together gave me a framework in which to house the training I received from Aadil. Bryan himself was also a student of Aadil’s, and much of what he taught in his Wall trainings was based in his studies with Aadil and as an Iyengar instructor and long-time Iyengar student.

With my studies with Aadil and Bryan as the foundation of my understanding of the Great Wall, combined with my own explorations and work with private clients, I began teaching Great Wall classes, workshops, and immersions in 2014, and after Bryan’s passing in 2019, I began to teach more in-depth Great Yoga Wall trainings for yogis and teachers.

I love distilling Aadil’s knowledge and experience along with Bryan’s language for describing the Wall – labeling the plates as P1 through P5 and talking about equalizing loops and tails is a Legerian way of talking about the Wall and its accessories – to explain clearly and succinctly not only how to use the Wall but how to think about the principles of Wall work.

The Wall is a powerful tool in a practitioner’s toolbox, and it takes years of study, practice, and integration to master this tool.

As Aadil says, the Wall ‘was made to go really deep, and most people don’t have enough training’ to harness this potential. Helping Yoga instructors, Yoga therapists, Pilates teachers, and serious students with home Wall systems gain the training and understanding needed to harness this potential is one of my passions. The trainings I teach represent the collected work, knowledge, and expertise of Aadil Palkhivala and Bryan Legere, based on their studies with B. K. S. Iyengar and within the Iyengar tradition – the origin point for Wall work in modern yoga classes – as well as their personal innovations.

I continue to study with Aadil and am always refining and updating the Level One and Level Two manuals based on our work together and my own practice and work with students. I’m grateful to be a part of this lineage and share this information with yoga practitioners, teachers, and other embodiment practitioners who are using the Wall in their own practice and with students and clients.

My addition to this work is the further refinement of a language describing Wall work so you can easily communicate its uses to your students and clients as well as the lens through which I have codified this material into a well-organized, easily digestible manual that supports your integration of the material presented.

I love sharing this information and am proud of the way we structure our trainings and manuals so that even asynchronous participants feel like they are getting just as much out of the training as folks who attend in-person or are participating in a live virtual capacity. Our Level One training gives you confidence in the basics of Wall work: how to use the prop and how to think about traction, creating space, and assisting stability with the Wall. The Level Two training applies those basics to more intermediate poses while helping you refine your sense of exploration as well as honing your intuition for therapeutic applications.

If you are a studio owner with a Great Wall system looking to train your teachers, an instructor with access to a Great Wall looking to deepen your understanding and application of this amazing prop with your students and private clients, or a practitioner with a home Great Wall system, these training will give you the knowledge, confidence, and understanding to create space in the body, encourage decompression and regulation of the nervous system, and offer a higher level of accessibility and versatility for folks with a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and abilities. I look forward to helping you connect to the possibilities of this invaluable tool.

"The training was very well organized, thoughtful, insightful, and created an excellent learning environment."

— M.P., Pilates & Yoga instructor

Aadil & Letitia at Purna Yoga East in Clayton, NC

Letitia is a Certified Purna Yoga Teacher at the 2,000 Hour Level, a registered Yoga Alliance teacher (E-RYT 200, E-RYT 500), and the director of Purna Yoga 828 studio in Asheville, N.C., At her studio and in her teaching, she cultivates a community-oriented, non-competitive, and compassionate studio environment in which to practice, change, and grow. She is grateful to practice in an authentic Indian lineage with Aadil Palkhivala and his wife Savitri, the co-founders of Purna Yoga®.

In addition to studying yoga for scoliosis with Elise Browning Miller and adaptive yoga with Matthew Sanford, Letitia trained in the Great Yoga Wall™ system with Aadil Palkhivala and Bryan Legere, co-creators (along with Kedric Wolfe) of The Great Yoga Wall™.